Sunday, January 22, 2012

Viewing Youtube in Mac OS 9

As long as we're talking about OS 9, Dr. Dave alerted me to a couple of Japanese-authored apps for viewing Youtube and flv files in 9.2.2 (I didn't test these in earlier systems). The instructions and interface are written in Japanese, so it's a little confusing if you don't speak it, but I managed to more or less work it out.

(UPDATE: The YTBrowser9 link below is an outdated version. Try this new version here.)

For YTBrowser9, after downloading and unpacking double click on it and it'll ask which browser you're using. Since I'm using Classilla, I clicked on Mozilla. Then, when you click through a couple of other boxes in Japanese and click cancel when it asks you to enter a Youtube url, Classilla should open up a welcome screen, again in Japanese. Find a link on that page that goes to an index file. Once you've found the index, you should see a red bar at the top with links to search, preferences, history, and a few others. Click on search, enter a search phrase, and then once you see a video you want to watch, copy its link, then navigate back to the index and click "?? URL" (its full url is "ytbb://www.youtube.com/dialog") and paste your link. Then you should see something like this:

Notice the download button. You need javascript enabled to use it with "Save Link Target As..." for downloading.

To make YTBrowser9 easier to use, I added bookmarks for the search and enter URL links. I'm not sure if this is exactly how you're supposed to use it, but that happens when your Japanese is as rusty as mine, har.

As for FLVPlayer9, it apears to be a simple drag and drop application. Just take a saved FLV file and drop it over the app, then it'll open it in a web browser window.

One final note, I notice the most recent version of Classilla defaults to a site's mobile page by setting its user agent to a Nokia mobile device. Really cool move. Makes Youtube and other sites zip. Though you can change it back to "normal" on a site-by-site basis via cookies, or globally by changing the user agent.

UPDATE: It looks like YTBrowser9 is similar to MacTubes in that you have to downlaod a new version whenever Youtube changes something in their url protocol.

18 comments:

I also like Clasilla's move to mobile sites, you get most of the content with none of the ads or pathologic javascript. Do you actually view the 3GP files on m.youtube.com? I thought that required Quicktime 6.5 or higher, which isn't available for OS9.

Now that I think about it, I've tried that flvplayer app before, and YTBrowser uses it as well. It exhibited the same behavior the last time I tried it as well. It worked for a couple of videos, then never worked again. I tried it in iCab as well, and get the same "failed to convert" error, and the standalone FLV player doesn't work either. Really, REALLY weird...

Would it be possible to make an app for OS9 that is a youtube player? It would work similar to YTD (youtube downloader) but instead of actually downloading video files to the hard drive, just stream them.

It should go the way the Wii went, where it downloads a bit, then begins to play, and as you watch, it downloads more and deletes the portion you watched already. To rewind, it would scrap all that you have and begin downloading that portion and continue on. Same goes for fast forward.

Make it compatible with the earliest iMac G3s (bondi blue) but require at least 128MB Ram. These things came with 32MB, but can be bumped up to 128MB. Later models did 512. Those of us with the earliest model of G3 would love to see it come back to life. It already plays Diablo2 no problem, just not on battlenet... LAN play works, and that's more than enough for most of us. Battlenet is pretty much broken anyway (random IP bans etc)